Wife of Iain Duncan Smith calls for more medical dogs to be trained to sniff out cancer

THE wife of Iain Duncan Smith has called for more medical dogs to be used in the sniffing out of cancer.

Betsy Duncan Smith has spoken for the first time about her battle with cancer

Betsy Duncan Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and spent two years going through gruelling treatment to beat the disease.

Speaking for the first time about her battle, during which time her husband was campaigning for the general election in 2010, Mrs Duncan Smith described feeling wiped out by the intense treatment she received.

This included an exhausting six months of chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy.

"My energy levels went to zero. There were days I just couldn’t walk," she told The Telegraph.

"On occasion I couldn’t even talk. Iain had to bring his office home and look after me. It must have been very worrying for him, poor chap, but he coped brilliantly."

During her treatment, she lost her hair but insisted that she was not bothered "in the slightest" because that was the "least of my problems".

"Eventually I started getting stronger. I’m out of it now but I’m still checked," she said.

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Mrs Duncan Smith has spoken about using dogs to detect cancer

Then in 2012, after finally beating the disease, a friend asked her to visit the Medical Detection Dogs (MDD) - a charity which is working on research that uses dogs to sniff out cancer from breath or urine samples.

She said she was pretty "reluctant" at first and that the "last thing" she wanted to do was get involved in anything concerning cancer.

But their work in the early detection of cancer and her own experience with the disease finally inspired her to go along.

“When I was finally persuaded to visit, I was quite simply blown away,” she said.

During her two years working with the MDD, Mrs Duncan Smith has fostered one of their 18 cocker spaniels being used in trials and is now aiming to "drag people in" to change attitudes surrounding the research.

Dogs are used to save lives elsewhere – at airports, around explosives, even checking out the House of Commons. Why this reluctance to use them in medicine?

Betsy Duncan Smith

"I think some medical professionals just thought it was another mad-dog charity, but now that is changing," she said.

One way it has developed is through two local NHS trusts joining forces with MDD to carry out the current trials, she revealed.

"NHS England has just announced a new push on early detection of cancer, and I want to say to them, don’t write us off. Let our dogs be part of your work.

"Dogs are used to save lives elsewhere – at airports, around explosives, even checking out the House of Commons. Why this reluctance to use them in medicine?”

Mrs Duncan Smith is also a member of the MDD delegation meeting, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer, who are hoping to push the potential of dogs in the health sector.

She said the evidence of their research is "blindingly obvious" and that their dogs can "beat any cancer detection device" while being much cheaper.

“What I really want to do is urge people to forget that dogs are wet noses and waggy tails and focus instead on the science," she said.

“These dogs’ sense of smell is so strong that, in trials, they can detect traces of amyl acetate when it is diluted in the ratio of one part to a trillion."

Mrs Duncan Smith married the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 1982. The couple have four children together.